No Parking

As we continued our journey down Jesus Road in our Easter message series, U-Turns Allowed, we considered the power of a transformed life in light of the No Parking sign. To help us better grasp this concept, we looked at the life of Peter as an example.

If you read the Gospel accounts of Peter, you find a very passionate and impetuous person. He is the disciple who in one moment is ready fight to the death for Jesus, and literally hours later, denied he even knew Him. Yet after Jesus’ Resurrection, Peter became a completely different person and embodied the qualities of the rock upon which the Church would be built, just as Jesus said. The transformation we see in Peter’s life is extraordinary and shows that there is hope for all of us.

As we make our way down Jesus Road, we will experience various triumphs and tragedies ourselves. The temptation is to park and stay right there. When we experience a triumph, we never want that feeling to end and park in hopes of staying in that moment. On the other hand, when we experience tragedies in life, the temptation is to allow the pain and potential loss of hope to cause us to stop along our faith journey. Stopping in either of these situations is not good for us. We need the mountain-top-type moments to build us up for the valley below, but we also need the valley moments to help maximize the beauty of the view from the mountain top.

The bottom line is the highs and lows of life help make us who we are, and when we can see God’s power and presence in the midst of them both, we experience transformation. The funny thing about transformation, though, is it is almost exclusively understood in hindsight. When we are being molded and shaped, we often do not know what is transpiring in the moment until we have a chance to get a few more paces down the road and can see the difference versus where we were when we began. 

In 1 Peter 3:15, we read that we all should be able to give a reason for the hope that we have in faith. What are the highs and lows in your own life that give you the hope that you have in Jesus Christ? This is the foundation of your story of transformation! Your story needs to be shared with others who are seeking hope that God is still actively at work in the world and in our lives, despite how bleak it might seem at the moment. If we park ourselves after experiencing a victory or defeat, then we scuttle our spiritual development. It is the highs of the mountain top moments that prepare us for the journey in the valley below, and it is the hope that the valley is not our destination that keeps us going. 

So keep trekking in your journey down Jesus Road. There is certainly time for rest and reflection along the way (more on that in a few weeks), but for now, no parking in the midst of your journey, because there are still miles to go and people to meet before it’s all said and done. We’ll explore this a bit further on Sunday in our message, Merge, where I will teach about the necessity of relationships for ministry and service.

God Bless, and I hope to see you Sunday (if not before)!

Pastor Mark 

Slippery Road Ahead

We continued our U-Turns Allowed message series this past Sunday, discussing temptation with the road sign, Slippery Road Ahead (you can watch this message by clicking here). One of the key insights from the message is that temptation does not equal sin. Hebrews 4:15 tells us that Jesus was tempted in every way, but did not sin. Temptation comes to us from so many different sources and angles, and it is important to have some knowledge and wisdom about temptation. To do this, we explored Luke’s version of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness (Luke 4:1-13).

Jesus’ temptation came after a profound spiritual experience – his baptism. You might find it curious that temptation came right after such a profound spiritual experience, but I think this is true for most, if not all, of us. Significant spiritual encounters can leave us feeling invulnerable, which actually makes us more susceptible to attacks from the enemy. Using Jesus’ temptation as an example, we can see three areas where we are particularly vulnerable:

1. Our appetite and cravings for food, beverage, drugs, sex, and other items that can take on a god-like status in our lives
2. Our need to feel important, but we must guard again self-serving methods that are unethical and unholy 
3. Our tendency to take God’s grace for granted by thinking we can give in to our temptations, even knowing when we are wrong, because of God’s love, grace, and forgiveness.

You most likely know the areas in your life where you are vulnerable to temptation as it pertains to your appetites, need for significance, and propensity to take God’s forgiveness for granted. Looking back over your life and past mistakes is critically important to see what kind of slippery road might lie ahead in your journey of faith. As the old saying attributed to George Santayana goes, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This is highly applicable in our spiritual life as well. Our past mistakes, failures, and sins reveal potential vulnerabilities that Satan will use to cause us to slip up in the future. After all, Luke 4:13 gives us the insight that Satan looks for opportune times when we are vulnerable to specific temptations.

In 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, the Apostle Paul had a great teaching on looking at our past to help us deal with future temptation. In this writing, Paul encourages his readers to be warned from their past, because they had the powerful presence of God right in their midst, yet still succumbed to their appetites, self-serving need for significance, and took God’s grace for granted. Within this section, we get the oft misunderstood idea that God never puts more on us than we can handle. Check out how The Message states this verse, “No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13)

God is not a tempter, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be tempted. God promises to be present with us to help us through the temptations of life, and this is critically important! God cannot have any part of sin, but his grace is there to hold us up when we feel like falling. And in those times when we do slip up, we can humbly go to the Lord, repent of our sin, make the necessary u-turn, and get right back on Jesus Road.

I hope you will plan to join us this coming Sunday as we continue our U-Turns Allowed message series. This week’s topic is No Parking where we will explore staying on Jesus Road, inviting others along for the journey, and looking back to see just how far we have come!

Right Way/Wrong Way

We have a God who (thankfully) allows us to make U-Turns in life! As we discussed in our Easter Sunday message, repentance is a word that means a literal change in the way we think and live. If you are going the wrong way in life, then make a U-Turn to start living the right way. But know this: your U-Turn is not the destination in and of itself, but the beginning of a brand new journey. This is important for us to acknowledge, lest we think that all we need to do is make a U-Turn and then end the journey right then and there.

As Jesus was teaching and preparing His disciples for His inevitable departure, He said, “I am the Road, also the Truth, also the Life. No one gets to the Father apart from me” (John 14:6, The Message). This teaching gives us the explicit idea that Jesus isn’t merely the destination, because He is also the road by which we travel! In our U-Turn, Jesus is inviting us to join Him on His road — Jesus Road — the road that leads to God.

All too often, we have a dead-end experience and we know we must make a U-Turn, but before too long, we are right back on the same road as before. Jesus is intent on showing us the right way, but we still choose the wrong way. The GOOD NEWS is God is gracious and loving and allows us to make another U-Turn to leave the wrong way and get back on the right way…the Jesus Road.

Traveling along the Jesus Road will leave us changed, no doubt about it. This is threatening for some. I can remember sharing my faith with someone years ago who thought that following Jesus meant that we could never have any fun. Sadly, this is an indictment on the way many believers live out their faith; either inconsistently or so woefully lacking joy. Following Jesus isn’t about never enjoying life, because it is about experiencing a life we could never ever dream of apart from Him.

In Matthew 7:13-14, Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” There is an inherent paradox in this teaching, which is for those on the path to destruction, the Jesus Road seems so restrictive and constrictive, but in reality, following Christ reveals a whole new path full of life-giving love that we would otherwise never experience. But again, the Jesus Road leaves us changed.

Once we make the U-Turn, leaving the wrong way for the right way on the Jesus Road, we also begin to see things that we never saw previously. The Lord enlightens our hearts, eyes, and ears to suffering in the world, the blight of the needy, and cries of the oppressed seeking truth and life. Our journey along Jesus Road, therefore, becomes one of reaching out in love and concern for those who need it so desperately. Traveling along Jesus Road, we begin to sense the brokenness of the world in ways we never did before, and the Casting Crowns song lyric all of a sudden makes sense: “Lord, break my heart for what breaks yours.”

God is inviting you on a journey to Him down Jesus Road, and He wants you to use your resources and relationships wisely to help others reach their heavenly destination, too. Have you ever experienced a burden well up within you so powerfully that you uttered rhetorically, “Somebody ought to do something about that”? Have you considered that you might very well be that somebody? God wants to use your life as you travel the right way down Jesus Road to help others find their dead-end, make their U-Turn, and join you on the journey to God.

Who has God placed in your life? What burdens has God placed in your heart? What resources has God given you to help you be that somebody who can make an eternal difference for another? Make that U-Turn…get on Jesus Road…help others get there, too! 

You can watch the video for this message by clicking here.

You-Turns Allowed

This past week in worship, as we celebrated Resurrection Sunday, we began a new message series entitled, U-Turns Allowed; you can watch the message by clicking here. The point of this opening message which will carry on throughout the series, is that the Resurrection of Jesus completely changed the world and our relationship with God. As I mentioned Sunday, before Jesus’ Resurrection, the old bumper sticker pretty much summed it up: the one who dies with the most toys wins. But with Jesus’ victory over sin and death, we can find assurance in His words that, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.” (John 11:25)

Jesus himself proved this to be true on Resurrection morning. As the gospels tell us, Mary was on her way to the tomb to care for Jesus’ dead body. When she arrived, however, she found the tomb empty! This led her to make a U-Turn of sorts and head back to share the news to the rest of Jesus’ disciples.

For you and me, if we find ourselves in a difficult time, oppressed by the same feelings that haunted the disciples – their betrayal, denial, fear, dismay – we can rest assured that the power of God that busted in the tomb to call forth Jesus is the same power that bursts through the rock-hard walls of our hearts to bring us back to life, too! And the good news is it is never too late, and we are never too far gone, for God’s power to be able to work miracles in our lives! All you need to do is accept the power of God, and with faith in Christ as the one sent to free us, receive the blessings of salvation. For as the bible says, “…if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:17-18)

Implicit in this message is we need others to help us on the journey of life in faith. We will invariably encounter difficulties, potholes, seeming dead-ends, endless construction, and all kinds of unknown conditions on the road of life, but when we travel together, we find safety, support, accountability, and it is frankly a whole lot more fun.

I hope you will make plans to be with us throughout this Easter season (which runs until Pentecost on May 24) for our U-Turn message series. It will be enlightening, informative, entertaining, and challenging; through it all, though, we will gain a deeper appreciation for how we can make our own individual U-Turns from a dead-end way of living and embrace a new way of thinking and behaving (remember: repentance) that keeps us on God’s path. The remaining topics we’ll cover are:

·       April 12 – Wrong Way/One Way | John 14:1-8 | Salvation

·       April 19 – Slippery Road Ahead | 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 | Temptation

·       April 26 – No Parking | 1 Peter 3.8-16 | Evangelism

·       May 3 – Merge | Romans 15:1-13 | Relationships for Service

·       May 10 – Yield | Romans 10:1-13 | The Lordship of Jesus

·       May 17 – Rest Area | Exodus 20:9-11 | Sabbath

Happy Easter, have a great week, and I hope to see you Sunday (if not before!),

Pastor Mark 

Praise

I taught on praise as a part of our Worship Life series this past Sunday. Just as the meaning of the word ‘worship’ implies a certain physical and emotional posture – bowed and surrendered before God – the word praise carries similar implications. As I mentioned on Palm Sunday, there are seven different words for praise in the ancient Hebrew, and four of them deal with the use of the hands:

• 1. Lifting our hands high to God in praise
• 2. Holding our hands with palms facing upward in prayer to receive a blessing
• 3. Reaching out with our hands to praise God by serving others
• 4. Using our hands to make music in praise of God, clapping included

It is easy to see that when we consider praising God, our words and deeds matter. The Bible certainly gives us clarity as we consider the connection between how we use our words and our hands in praise to God through our Worship Life: “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Colossians 3.17)

The reason I looked at the concept of praise in the Hebrew is because of a very poignant verse found in Psalm 22.3: “The Lord inhabits the praises of His people.” I found myself convicted as I thought about my own Worship Life. How often has God inhabited my words? How often has God inhabited my deeds? Am I using my words and my hands to praise Him? Am I living my entire life in worshipful praise of who God is and what God has done for me in Christ Jesus? How about you? Living the Worship Life means that we seek to praise God with our words, deeds, and very lives!

The Worship Life series has been very helpful in critically exploring how we are living for God. The topics we have explored thus far are: individual and corporate worship, prayer, generosity, and praise. We are not finished with this series, though, because we have two more very meaningful installments as we get ready for Easter. Tomorrow we will celebrate Maundy Thursday with our message, Feasting, commemorating Jesus’ Last Supper and the gift of Holy Communion as a means to remember what Christ did for us. Then on Good Friday, we will consider a life of Faith as our final installment in The Worship Life, commemorating Jesus’ death on the cross to pay the ultimate penalty for humanity’s sinfulness.

Have a great rest of the week, using your words, your hands, and your entire life to give praise to God for what He has done for us in Christ Jesus!

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
In his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead...
(1 Peter 1:3)